WASHINGTON: The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed Chris Wright, a fracking executive, to be President Donald Trump’s energy secretary. The vote was 59-38.
Wright, 60, the CEO of Liberty Energy since 2011 has said he will step down from the company once confirmed. He wrote in a Liberty report last year he believes human-caused climate change is real, but that its hazards are “distant and uncertain.” He has also said that top-down governmental policies to curb it are destined to fail.
Wright will be in charge of an agency that has about a $50 billion budget with about half of that going to maintain the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
He will also be in charge of the department’s 17 national labs that cover everything from research fusion energy to super-computing. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner, David Morgan and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Leslie Adler and Sandra Maler)
